Web Only / Features » October 10, 2012

The $3.5 Million Dollar Woman

Lena Dunham has always lived in a universe where someone like Lena Dunham could happen.

First things first: Lena Dunham's book deal, when compared to the deals afforded most authors, is enormous. She received $3.5 million dollars for her proposal. To put this in perspective, if her book comes in at around 270 pages (Tina Fey's Bossypants, the book to which it has been most widely compared pre-publication, weighs in at 277) she will be paid $12,962.96 per page, plus royalties. I don't know what a thirteen-thousand-dollar page of writing looks like, but if I did, rest assured I would not stop until I'd produced many hundreds of them.

Then again, Lena Dunham's book deal is, as far as celebrity sales go, nothing out of the ordinary. Fey herself reportedly received around twice as much: Between $5.5 and $6 million, or, at the bare minimum, $19,855.59 per page. And this is the best-case scenario, creatively speaking–the one in which the pages we look at are actually filled with words (or, “writing”) and in which we can assume that Fey, a writer, actually thought up and typed those words, in that order. No one has leaked how much Gwyneth Paltrow was paid for her cookbook My Father's Daughter; I bought it as a joke from a used bookstore and can confirm that it's mostly pictures of food and/or Paltrow, interspersed with tiny recipes and anecdotes that float around like pieces of a shipwreck in the vast white ocean of largely empty pages. And, as with most celebrity books, even the tiny bit of writing contained therein was probably ghostwritten, though Paltrow herself disputes the claim.

But the controversy around Dunham's book isn't so much about the question of why she's getting a celebrity-sized book deal, rather than cranking out an artisanally crafted memoir for $5 grand, but around whether her celebrity is “deserved.” Leaving aside the question of whether celebrity has ever worked on the principle of “deserving” (we live in a world where Kristen Stewart and Scarlett Johansson can headline summer blockbusters, despite their stubborn refusal to make more than one facial expression) it's true that Dunham's gotten a remarkably large amount of attention remarkably early in the game. Fey worked her way up for decades, from improv to writing for SNL to going on-camera to running 30 Rock; Mindy Kaling, another competitor in the funny-girl-memoir genre, worked as a writer, producer and bit player on one of TV's most successful sitcoms, The Office, carefully cultivating her online fan base and name recognition for years, before getting her break. Dunham has made one independent movie and one season of one show on HBO.

And it is undeniably true that Dunham's success is reliant on her race and class. This has been pointed out more often when it comes to Dunham than it has in the case of white men with the same built-in advantages, or better ones. People tended to note that Noah Baumbach was the son of two critics, or that Joss Whedon was a third-generation TV writer, with affectionate bemusement, if at all. Yet Dunham's parents, artists Carroll Dunham and Laurie Simmons, were often portrayed as all-powerful Hollywood moguls, forcing Judd Apatow at knifepoint to fund their daughter's show.

But the criticism is still valid; Dunham has had the financial safety to pursue her ambitions and the connections to get her name out. Not only this, but she's always lived in a world where making art for a living was possible. And she's white, and has hence always seen female creators who look like her in the media. Not many of them. But they've been there: For as long as Lena Dunham has been able to legally buy alcohol, 30 Rock has been on the air.

This is the nasty little bit we don't like to think of, when it comes to privilege and talent; social status shapes not only one's ability to pursue artistic dreams, but one's ability to dream them. Plenty of talented kids give up their passions for something more “practical,” or just fail to believe they could ever be more than amateurs, because they've never seen a real person making good on similar ambitions. Until I met people who'd actually written published work, and had been paid for that writing, I thought of it as an impossible career. “Real writers” existed, somewhere, but it was silly to think I could be one of them. They existed in some parallel universe that I couldn't reach. Lena Dunham has always lived in a universe where someone like Lena Dunham could happen. And yes: With its overwhelming whiteness, the privilege of its characters, and the unfortunate decision to cast only the children of other famous people as her core set of friends, her work shows the limitations of her upbringing and privilege. Ignoring this, or claiming not to give a shit about it, is, let us say, not very productive.

And here's what most 26-year-olds with Lena Dunham's advantages manage to accomplish: Absolutely nothing. Trust me; I've met these kids. Given the money and the privilege necessary to stagnate for most of their twenties, until they decided it might be fun to act like adults and landed safely in white-collar jobs, they merrily stagnated. The closest thing I can remember to someone cashing in on his parents' artistic legacy to do creative work is a kid in my sophomore dorm who claimed his Dad was a fashion photographer; the rumor was that he would tell you this right before he whipped out his Polaroid camera and asked you to pose topless. Given some of the reactions to Dunham, it seems that some people think Dunham would have risen to her current level of success even if her entire pilot script for Girls was a stick figure drawn in crayon, helpfully labeled “LENA.”

The unpleasant fact is that, despite her privilege and her clumsy use of it, Dunham’s also talented and hard-working. The point of leveling the playing field isn't to say that no one with advantages should make art; it's to say that people with fewer advantages, and an equal amount of talent, should also be recognized and compensated.

Dunham might still have a book deal if she were from Iowa and her parents were local schoolteachers. The problem is, it would be an artisanally crafted memoir, cranked out for $5 grand.

Sady Doyle is an In These Times Staff Writer. She also contributes regularly to Rookie Magazine, and was the founder of the blog Tiger Beatdown. She's the winner of the first Women's Media Center Social Media Award. She's interested in women in pop culture, women creating pop culture, reproductive rights, and women's relationship to the Internet and the Left. You can follow her on Twitter at @sadydoyle, or e-mail her at sady inthesetimes.com.

What a sad pathetic article and the person who wrote it must be. I've never heard of Dunham and yet we're made to feel as if she's some important figure in modern culture. Did she get too big of an advance? Who knows. Let the market (i.e. people) decide. You can be sure if her book sucks she won't be getting anything next time and her career will most likely be in the toilet. In the meantime, all this high-school level bitching about someone who's got more, is prettier, blah blah and crying "it's not fair" like some upper-west side spoilt brat does nothing, nothing, to convince me of their case (meager as it is).

Posted by p on 2012-10-18 08:52:43

But does anyone need $3.5 mill to write a book?

Posted by D on 2012-10-14 21:00:34

In defence of Whedon and Bambauch, they've both delivered, and Whedon slogged away as a fairly anonymous writer until his 30s(I think he's actually estranged from his father) ...

But I *have* felt this way about some privileged dudes. I have to admit that I rolled my eyes when Nick McDonnell got not just published but praised by family friends like Joan Didion. But yeah, I can't see any direct connection between her parents (had anybody ever heard of thm before this?) and her getting the series.

What I think *is* safe to say is that had she been te daughter of schoolteachers from Iowa she might not have gone to Oberlin. So... Yeah.

Posted by D on 2012-10-14 20:59:13

This article did nothing.

Posted by Gonzo on 2012-10-14 20:55:30

I never knew this woman even existed until now. But she must have enjoyed some celebrity status. I couldn't even get an agent to look at my book and eventually had to self-publish.

Posted by beechnut79 on 2012-10-13 11:37:36

Not sure the point of this other than to whine that life's not fair. Of course people of privilege are given more opportunities. Dunham is talented as hell and I think it's awesome she's accomplished what she has so far. Women shouldn't attack each other like this.

Posted by Kim on 2012-10-12 18:58:09

This is a great article. I agree she's talented and hard-working, but I think the last half of the Girls season showed her ambition and desire to be famous winning out over the most interesting parts of her. She'll be around forever because she started out seeming like she was doing something daring and original, and then pulled her punches in order to be more accessible. The end of the season was beyond foolish and disappointing.

Oh, and that Gwyneth Paltrow cookbook is a lot better than that! Great recipes for low-key dishes. Great for last-minute, family setting. But, you have to overlook the intro by greedy a**hole Mario Batelli.

Posted by Louis on 2012-10-11 16:42:36

"Lena Dunham has always lived in a universe where someone like Lena Dunham could happen. And yes: With its overwhelming whiteness, the privilege of its characters, and the unfortunate decision to cast only the children of other famous people as her core set of friends, her work shows the limitations of her upbringing and privilege. Ignoring this, or claiming not to give a shit about it, is, let us say, not very productive." Everything about this is articulate and considerate. Thank you, Sady!